by M. P. Cooley
I faked a laugh. I was easing the judge into the topic of Brian’s fishing trip. The room had a giant window facing the courthouse, but it received afternoon sunlight, and the whole office was in shadow. As we talked, people stopped and gave Judge Medved a quick wave, and he responded with a mock salute or a mouthed hello.
“So you don’t join your family for any non-fishing activities up in Lake George?”
“Sometimes, yes. My brother Jake is a simple man, and despite his previous problems, a good man.” Maxim Medved spoke without Natalya’s accent but had the formal sentence structure of an immigrant. It probably served him well on the bench, giving his judgments greater weight. “Many times my brother or my nephew have invited me, and I like to make the effort, go along.”
“But during the May trip?”
“During the May trip, no, I did not. The nights there get cold, and I feel freezing weather in my bones.” He tapped the leather desk pad that topped his gigantic curved oak desk. “Do not get old, Officer Lyons.”
This time I laughed for real. He’d shot Brian’s alibi through of holes, and I tried to hide my glee as I wrote down the details.
There was a knock on the window. The judge waved to Elda Harris, who was wearing a cream-colored beret and an Irish sweater, a wash of pale except for her coral lipstick.
“She is coming back to life,” the judge said. “First time in years. May I inquire, what do you plan on doing to Luisa? She committed fraud—”
“That’s an ongoing investigation,” I said. “I hope you’ll appreciate—”
He waved it off. “Of course. Procedure.”
There was a knock, this time at the door and the receptionist called through the door.
“Enter,” he said. She did, halfway, tilting sideways so her frizzy permed head was inside, the rest of her body hidden.
“Your nephew is on the phone,” she said.
“Tell Brian I will return his call later.” He raised one bushy eyebrow. “It is Brian, correct?”
She agreed to pass on the message, closing the door silently behind her.
“I am not used to having multiple nephews,” he said. “Bernie and Deirdre say that we are to leave his boys alone, but if they reach out . . .”
I decided to keep him talking and away from Brian’s phone calls for as long as I could. I pointed to a picture behind him, a blown-up photo of the ribbon cutting for the 787 extension. The judge was standing in front of a five-foot-tall yellow ribbon, a bold choice when a giant shovel might be more appropriate.
“Is that snow on the ground?” I asked.
“It is,” he said. “There were so many false starts over the years that we did not want to risk waiting until the new legislature took office in January, when they might put the project on hold. Construction could be delayed for weather, but not stopped.”
“Can I take a closer look?” I said. “I think I see my father.”
“Of course, of course,” the judge said, delighted. He stood close to the photo, identifying the mayor, a few council members, a congressman, and even a state senator. My father was on crowd control, despite the risk of unruly crowds being practically nil.
“It was the most important day of my life. The day I brought hundreds of jobs to the area. The day I arranged so Hopewell Falls would be connected by a four-lane highway, bringing trucks and trade.”
“Is that Lucas?” I asked. He had feathered hair and mirrored sunglasses and like his fellow workers wore a puffy blue coat.
“It is. His first job off the assembly line. And that is my brother-in-law, Dan. Before marriage, of course.”
I squinted. Dan had worn a bright red scarf, standing out from the rest of crowd
“My brother-in-law has changed, has he not?” The judge rocked back on his heels. “He was a rough young man, not caring for much beyond beer and women.”
“Construction jobs are pretty sweet,” I said. “How’d he line that up if he was such a punk?”
“Jake came to me, asked me to get them assigned to the projects. He told me Dan was likely going to be our brother-in-law, and Lucas was proving to be a go-getter. I made some calls.” He folded his hands in front of him. “For family, you do that.”
The secretary knocked again, coming in without waiting, and placed a pink message slip on the desk.
“Message from Brian,” she said. “He’d like you to call.”
The words “dinner” and “Lake George” were clearly visible on the note. I started peppering Maxim Medved with questions to keep him away from the desk.
“Were Jake and Bernie at the grand opening of the thruway?”
“Is your question a trick?” His voice was harsh, the politician’s solicitous charm now gone.
I was worried I’d blown it. “Not in the least.”
“No, of course. My brother had such pride in his business, he would never go a day without opening, even on a day of such importance to me.” His hands shook as he unhooked the photo from the wall, not an old man’s tremble, but anger. “But Bernie. This is the day everything changed. This is the day Luisa went missing.”
He moved quickly toward his desk, carrying the photo, and I was relieved when he dropped it on top of the pink message slip. He tapped his temple. “Of course, I may be mistaking details about that day. I have had too much crammed into my head for too long and, of course, I am an old man.”
I hoped he hadn’t seen the message from Brian, but my hope was short lived.
“For example, now that I think further on the topic,” he said, “I believe I misspoke before. You inquired into the trip Brian took in mid-May, correct?”
“I did,” I said.
He slipped a pocket-size book out of his jacket and flipped it open. A calendar.
“I really should not have commented on Brian’s trip without checking. He goes up so often, I may have given you the wrong information.” He licked his thumb and pushed the pages to May. “Yes. I was right. I gave you the wrong information. I did meet Brian in Lake George.” He jabbed the page. “It says so right there.”
This lie couldn’t stand, but I needed more details to make sure his “doddering old man” act wasn’t used in court. “Where did the two of you eat?”
Brian and I went to the Stanhope Lodge.” Judge Medved leaned back in his chair. “I love to visit whenever I am in Lake George. Wonderful food, beautiful views. Classy in every way.”
The Lodge was gorgeous, built in 1906 by New York City socialites trying to recover from tuberculosis. With the invention of penicillin, the sanitarium was repurposed as a hotel, an escape from New York’s stifling heat. I had a hard time picturing the judge there, let alone Brian. Perhaps the judge had a secret life where he hobnobbed with the rich and famous. It was nothing like the hamburger stand Brian had described.
I was ready to call his bluff. “May I see your calendar?”
He held out the calendar and I flipped back to the week Luisa was kidnapped in New Mexico. Several appointments were jotted in, all in Cyrillic.
“That one,” he said, pointing to Wednesday. It could have said he was playing first base for the Mets for all I knew. “I am sorry it is not in English. I’m Americanized in every way except in this one small area. A small way to stay in contact with my roots. Natalya would be so pleased.”
A loud voice demanding to see the judge could be heard through the door. Was it Brian? Lucas rushed in, grabbing the judge’s lapel.
“My mother’s killer is strutting around free. I ran into him on Silliman Street—”
The judge rested his hand on Lucas’s shoulder. “Do not trouble yourself.”
“You said justice would be served! I want to destroy him—”
“Now, Lucas,” the judge said, his eyes flicking to me. “You do not mean that.”
“Yes! I want—”
“No, take it from an old judge. What you have described is vengeance.” He walked Lucas to a chair. “Back in our childhoods, your aunt and I lived through an end
less cycle of vengeance, each time hoping we would have peace if one more Soviet official died, one more Red Army soldier was buried in a shallow grave, the right Nazi burned alive. It never worked.”
The judge’s deep voice rolled over me. It had the steady cadence and deep tone of the one Medved used from the bench, as if you were hearing the voice of God. Lucas looked hypnotized.
“We escaped it, and I refused to live that way. Law and order are to be trusted, or we will have chaos.” The gravity of his statement sunk in, and I hoped Lucas heard it so he would give up his vigilante role. The judge held Lucas’s gaze as he made the next statement: “Do you agree, Officer Lyons?”
“I do,” I said, although for a statement I believed in wholeheartedly, it was hard to get out. It was the truth, but it had been extracted from me. I wanted out.
“I have all the information I need,” I said. “Would you mind if I made a scan of that picture? It would tickle my father.”
“Of course.” He waved toward the outer office. “Marlene is responsible for all the new technology. Have her do it for you.”
“And your calendar?” I held out my hand. “It would be good to have documentation.”
“That I cannot do,” Judge Medved said. “I advise people, in confidence, sometimes on legal matters.”
“But you aren’t a lawyer—”
“True. And if you find you need more than my word, than you can get a warrant,” he said.
The new technology the judge referred to didn’t include scanning capability, but Marlene was able to remove the picture from the frame and without the glass make a pretty clear copy. Taking an inventory of the office, I could understand why the judge considered a Xerox machine pretty cutting edge, with a computer whose plastic was taking on a yellow cast, cases of heavy paper, a typewriter in the corner, and three walls taken up with law volumes from the seventies. He was no lawyer, and I wondered if he had ever read the books, or if they were just for show. While I waited, I checked my phone for texts from Hale: “Got the warrant.” “Got Jaleda’s calendar.” And three minutes ago: “I’m outside judge’s office.”
The lobby of the building was dim, and I almost missed Hale.
“That was quite a visit you had with the judge,” he said, his hand resting on a wooden globe that topped the banister leading to the second floor.
“It would have been longer, but Lucas paid a visit, demanding that Bernie go back to jail in the next ten minutes. The judge seemed to be trying to calm him, but I got the sense it was just for my benefit. He didn’t say no.”
The bulb came off in Hale’s hand, the joints of the handrail so loose that the bannister wobbled when he gently placed it back. I peeked around the corner and then glanced up the staircase. It was carpeted with a threadbare oriental rug, the floors above in shadow as the judge’s office was the only one still in operation. This hallway would be the one private place we’d have for a while, so I told him about my interview, including the destruction of Brian’s alibi as well as how the judge came to hire Lucas and Dan way back when.
“Jake.”
“You don’t say,” Hale said. “My money was on Bernie.”
“Me, too, but no. So the way things stand now, we can confirm that Jake purchased the materials for the wall that bricked in Vera, lined up the manpower, and then rewarded the people who did the construction.”
“Interesting,” Hale said. “Ashley gave up Dan’s calendar without a warrant, and he most certainly was not in Las Vegas. I don’t believe for a second that Jake went to New Mexico and kidnapped Luisa, but I now have little doubt that Brian did. And if I had to bet, I’d say he did it for dear old dad. So he’s at the center of the Vera murder and close to the center of the Luisa kidnapping.”
“And don’t forget his old girlfriend Oksana,” I said. “We don’t know she’s dead, but we can’t confirm she’s alive either.”
“For the simple reason that we aren’t working with decades-old evidence, Luisa’s kidnapping seems the easiest to prove,” he said. “We should try to get that one locked down.”
“Did you get the phone records so we can confirm Brian and Jake’s whereabouts that week?”
“Put in a request to the Department of Justice,” he said. “All that’s left to do is wait for them to say no.”
He was right. The chances were very slim that they’d see justifiable cause. We had to come up with more proof, but I wasn’t sure what. I suggested we take a break and get lunch and hope inspiration struck.
We were half a block away from Maria’s diner when we saw Bernie weaving up the sidewalk from the other direction, bumping into a NO PARKING sign before righting himself. Arresting him for public intoxication would be a PR nightmare. But no, he wasn’t walking off a drunk. He was staring straight up, surveying the buildings, smiling. I couldn’t figure out what was making him so happy—half the stores were boarded over, and I’d hardly call the check-cashing place a tourist destination. We were right in front of him before he saw us.
“Officer Lyons,” Bernie said, “and . . .”
“Special Agent Bascom.” Hale put out his hand and the two men shook.
“Recovered from yesterday?” I asked.
“What’s to recover from? It’s the best day of my life.” He reached out, running his fingers over the letters on a plaque identifying the building as the original site of the Simmons Axe Manufacturer. It had closed in the twenties; a dry grocer, an electronics store, and most recently an optometrist had all opened and gone bankrupt in the century since the axe company closed.
Bernie pulled his hand away from the wall. “Had a tough time talking my family into giving me a few minutes alone. Deirdre thinks if I’m unsupervised the press or the police will grab me off the streets.” He raised his eyebrows at me. “You’re not here for that, are you?”
“Just lunch, Bernie.”
“Lunch for me, too. I’ve been fantasizing about Maria’s banana pancakes for thirty years, and I’m going to get some now, breakfast hours be damned.”
He hesitated, and I assured him we wouldn’t question him during lunch. He relaxed but still hesitated before going inside, and I was thinking Hale and I would need to find another lunch spot. I was ready to talk Hale into pizza when the door opened and someone exited. Without touching the door, Bernie ducked in, and I remembered the prison: Bernie hadn’t been allowed to open a door for himself in thirty years.
Like an Old West saloon, the diner got quiet as we entered. Bernie went to the lunch counter, and Hale and I grabbed a booth in the corner. People’s eyes darted between us and Bernie, trying to figure out if this was some sort of last meal before we arrested him again. I ordered grilled cheese and tomato and Hale had a tuna melt, and like the rest of the people in the diner, listened as Bernie had a conversation with Janelle DuMurier, taking her lunch break before returning to driving her bus route.
“So what have you been up to?” Bernie asked Janelle.
Janelle struggled to answer. “Since . . . 1983?”
Bernie laughed. “Yeah, well. You know what I’ve been up to. You haven’t changed a bit. You look great!”
Janelle considered her bus driver’s uniform. The clothes were neat and pressed, but they wouldn’t flatter anyone.
“You’ve been in prison for a long time, haven’t you?” she said.
Bernie laughed again. “Sorry, my small talk’s rusty. But you do look great.” He carefully placed his knife and fork to his left, grabbing some napkins to rest the cutlery on. “If you tell me about yourself, I promise to shut up.”
The rest of our meal was spent listening to a free man absolutely delighted to be eating his banana pancakes and talking to a bus driver about her biannual trips to Civil War battlefields. Not a bad way to spend a lunch hour.
CHAPTER 21
AS EXPECTED, OUR REQUEST FOR A WARRANT FOR THE PHONE records was denied.
“It was a long shot,” I said. “It was all circumstantial.”
Hale continued f
rowning down at his phone, which had delivered the bad news about the warrant.
“Something up?” I asked.
“Nothing related to this case. I could tell you about it if—”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Why don’t we assume every conversation will include some element of you begging me to rejoin the FBI, and me saying no, and we can save each other the trouble.”
Hale went to take care of business and I decided to visit Dave, more as a welfare check than to move the case forward. His cell phone went right to voicemail, and he didn’t answer the door. I banged on the door again, louder, but there was still no response. It was four p.m., and Dave’s car was in the driveway. If he didn’t answer the door in thirty seconds I was going to let myself in. Luckily for him, I knew the location of his spare key and wouldn’t have to smash a window.
I followed the path around to the back, past a pile of two-by-fours under a blue tarp, treated and waiting for Dave to build a pergola. When Dave’s leave was extended, he made plans to do some home improvement, but those plans were long forgotten. Last year Dave had grown enough squash to keep the department in zucchini bread until Armageddon, but right now his yard was a patchy mess, barren except for a pink rose bush that Dave swore he was going to pull up by its roots one of these days.
Dave kept his spare key hidden in his tool shed. I found it behind some rose fertilizer—Ha! I knew he was trying to keep it alive!—and let myself in. The kitchen was no longer a public-health disaster. While the recycling was spilling over with beer bottles, dishes had been washed and the floor was swept. I wound my way toward the dining room, dim in the afternoon light with all the shades drawn. I felt my way along the wall and flipped on the light.
And then wished I hadn’t.
Dave always claimed he was a visual learner, and for any case that wasn’t easily solved he would often take over one of the interview rooms in the station, creating a timeline with tape marking relationships, actions, and evidence. I had appreciated it when we worked a murder together earlier this year, the crisscrossing tape marking the intersection of victims and suspects and revealing snarled relationships and gaps in people’s alibis.